science and engineering encyclopedia

Roentgen

The roentgen is a unit used to measure radiation exposure. This can only be used to describe an amount of gamma and X-rays, and only in air. One roentgen is equal to depositing in dry air enough energy to cause 2.58x10-4 coulombs kg-1. It is a measure of the ionizations of the molecules in a mass of air. The main advantage of this unit is that it is easy to measure directly, but it is limited because it is only for deposition in air, and only for gamma and x rays.